MOSCOW, June 7 (Itar-Tass World Service) - On Thursday, the Moscow City Court began preliminary hearing of the case on the disorders in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012 during the opposition’s rally. Meanwhile the European Parliament is sure the disorders were provoked by the police.
The Rossiiskaya Gazeta writes the investigation says during the approved March of the Millions rally Andrei Barabanov, Stepan Zimin, Denis Lutskevich, Yaroslav Belousov, Artem Savelov, Sergei Krivov, Alexander Dukhanina, Alexei Polikhovich, Vladimir Akimenkov, Nikolai Kavkazsky, Leonid Kovyazin and Maria Baronova breached several articles of the Criminal Code. The indictment, approved by the Prosecutor General’s Office, reads “they were destroying property and expressed violation against the police.” That criminal behaviour resulted in 82 injured police, and the damage to the federal and municipal authorities exceeded 28 million roubles.
Due to the special public attention to the hearing, additional security measures were undertaken around the court building, the Novye Izvestia reports. Several police buses were there for cases of non-approved actions from supporters of the “Bolotnaya prisoners.” However, the busses did not take “passengers” for a free ride. Activists with signs reading “Free Prisoners!” stood at a distance from the police - on the other side of the street from the court. Several more dozens of people were watching the process by the hall’s doors, to where the arrested had been taken.
The Moskovsky Komsomolets quotes its sources as saying the defence initiated two requests during the hearing: to return the case to the prosecutor and to dismiss the judge, “as she is interested personally in the result of the hearing, as her employers is Putin V.V.” The state prosecution also filed an application about extension of the arrests (including the house one) to all the suspects, except for Baronova, for another six months.
During the current week, the European Parliament had hearings devoted to the problem of political prisoners in Russia, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes. The deputies heard the vivid picture about how the “Bolotnaya prisoners” are kept behind the bars, and about the repressions against the opposition in Russia. The building’s foyer features a photo exhibition, which demonstrates the savagery of the police in Bolotnaya Square on May 6 of the past year, and the deputies and reporters received an English-language version of an expert view on those events. The document states, the disorders were organised by the police at a secret order from the power in order to launch repressions against the discordant.